eCommercize Strategies for Your Online Success

You made the sale, the money is in your account and now it is time to ship the merchandise to your customer. You pack the item carefully, tape the box closed and put a label on it. The package is picked up by your local mail carrier and is never seen again. What happened?

There is a possibility your item is now at the USPS Mail Recovery Center or the Dead Letter Office. This is where your mailed packages and letters end up if they are undeliverable to the recipient and the return address is missing or incorrect. There are two simple steps you can take to make sure this doesn’t happens to you.

Always put a clearly written or typed label on the package with your name and return address as well as your recipients address. If you send out a package without a return address and the package is undeliverable to the recipient, your package will be sent to the Mail Recovery Center.

Include either an invoice, packing slip or simply a piece of paper inside the package with the recipient’s address and the return address. If you package ends up at the Mail Recovery Center, worker’s will open the item and find the shipping information inside then return the package back to you. This goes for sending gifts to loved ones as well.

Now, neither of these steps help you if the item is delivered to the wrong address. A couple of years ago eight boxes of inventory I purchased were delivered by UPS to the wrong address (right street number, wrong street name). The products were never recovered. We received a refund but we lost valuable sales since our inventory never arrived.

If you ship your items via the Post Office, Delivery Confirmation is a must. Delivery Confirmation is a bar code specific to the individual package that is supposed to be scanned by the Post Office when the package is delivered. I say “supposed to be” because I know I have had many packages that have been delivered without being scanned. Delivery Confirmation is important to have in case there is an issue with the customer saying their item never arrived.

I have had people email me and say that they didn’t receive their package. I am able to look up the Delivery Confirmation number on the USPS web site and let the customer know when the package was delivered including the date and time. I ask the customer to check with their Postal Carrier or their neighbors to find out where the package was left. I usually get another email from the customer thanking me and telling me they got the item.

These three simple steps can save you a lot of headaches when it comes to delivering your merchandise to your customers.

Related posts:

1. Don’t Ever Pay Too Much For Shipping
2. Does Size Really Matter?
3. Building Relationships with Your Customers Begins with Communication
4. Selling Free Items

Tags: dead letter office, Delivery Confirmation, mail recovery center, Post Office, return to sender, Shipping

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 6:56 am and is filed under Shipping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.